


Smithereens

by Polly_Lynn



Series: Tumblr Methadone [3]
Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Male-Female Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-06-08 15:33:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6860878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of things I've posted on Tumblr during this drawn-out end of days. Most are from early Season 5, but they range throughout the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arousal

**Author's Note:**

> Most of these are very short; all are written to a something-hundred word count.
> 
>  

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wakes slowly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was 200 words when, surprise, I wasn't sleeping. Still not sleeping and it's not nearly this pleasant.

She wakes slowly. Infinitely slowly, like each and every cell in her body is one in a string of endless lights. Each and every cell winks on, one by one. She's warm and heavy and the distance from her toes to the top of her head is incalculable. The distance from fingertip to fingertip, with her arms flung wide and overhead simply can’t be measured. 

The room is dim. Razor-thin strips of sunlight outline the windows, but they're far off, and here—right here—it's hard to take daylight seriously. She tips her cheek away from it. Shifts her shoulders and feels the thrill of crisp, clean sheets against her bare skin. 

"Bare," she murmurs. She shivers. An illicit thrill. Anticipation. 

_Bare_

"Head to toe." His voice rumbles over her skin. His teeth graze the crest of her shoulder. "Absolutely bare." 

"Oh, good," she hears herself say. 

She hears some far-off, breathless version of herself say the words just before he swallows them down.  Just before he lifts the crisp clean sheets from her body and covers her bare skin with his own. 

"Good," he agrees as he sets about waking every cell in her body, infinitely slowly.


	2. Interrogation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She knows he’s there. The hairs on the back of her neck tell her. The hitch in her breath, though it takes a second or two to notice. He’s there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Four hundred words this time

She knows he’s there. The hairs on the back of her neck tell her. The hitch in her breath, though it takes a second or two to notice. He’s there. 

Or she’s  _here,_  really.  _His_  living room.  _His_  loft, but it already kind of doesn’t feel like that. It already kind of feels like theirs—hers at the moment, and he’s breaking the rules of engagement, skulking around the edge of the bookshelf like that.  

“You’re supposed to be writing.” 

She doesn’t look up from her book. Her back is to him, anyway, but it hardly matters. He hears the smile clear across the room. Knows the battle is won long before he plucks the hardback from her hands and dives face first on to the couch. He flops to his back, expansive and sprawling, till his head comes to rest in her lap. 

“I  _was_  writing,” he insists. He bumps at her, knuckles and elbows. He manhandles her deeper into the corner. Further into the absurd pile of pillows there. “I’ve been writing since the dawn of time.” 

“You’ve been writing for . . .” She makes a show of looking at her watch. She scrunches up her nose and peers at close. She stretches her arm far out, her fist practically in his face. “ . . . seventeen minutes.” 

“You’re a sad case, Beckett.” He captures her wrist. He blots out the watch dial and brings her palm to his lips. “Counting the minutes we’ve been apart.” 

“Calculating your hourly wage, Mr. Millionaire.” She swats at his nose, curling her fingers tight against the shiver his kiss leaves behind. “How is it you managed to write even one novel, let alone twenty-some?” 

“It’s a mystery, isn’t it, Detective?” The grin he tips up at her is pure challenge. 

It’s not an idle question on her part. She wants to know. She’s a shy, awkward mess about it, but it thrills her the way the tables have turned. The way it’s her peeking over his shoulder, eager to see how it all works.

And damned if he doesn’t know it. Damned if he’s not absolutely _smug._  He walks his fingers upward from her waist, bunching the fabric of her shirt until he has a fist full of it. Until he’s tugging her down toward him, and the space between his mouth and hers is practically imaginary. 

“A mystery,” he whispers. “Care to solve it?”


	3. Riddle Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the middle of the night. It's beyond the middle of the night, and there's no reason she shouldn't be sleeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 800 words.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It's the middle of the night. It's  _beyond_  the middle of the night, and there's no reason she shouldn't be sleeping. They closed the case. After going flat out for three days, they closed the case—wonder of wonders—at a decent hour. 

She's vanquished evil for now. She's had her favorite takeout and a generous glass of wine. A long soak in a bath just the right side of scalding. She's had him and he's had her, and the way her body is pulled tight against his leaves her feeling warm and perfect and . . . 

 _Awake._  Miserably, maddeningly, mystifyingly awake. 

"What?" 

The nearly soundless whisper peels her half off the bed. It leaves her heart banging hard against her ribs.

" _What_  what?" she demands. It's sharper than she means it to be. More telling, and even still, she can't quite stop herself from throwing a glare over her shoulder. She can't quite get the better of the urge to convince him that the source of the recent, undignified  _squeak_  was definitely not her. 

He's unperturbed, though. Agnostic about the squeak. 

"You  _tsk_ ed," he says, like it's obvious. "You don't generally  _tsk_  in your sleep. So . . . that 'what'." 

"I didn't _tsk._  I don't  _tsk_  at all, let alone in my . . ." Her brain catches up. She struggles free of  sheet and blanket and him. Free of the arm at her waist and the chin he's trying to tuck right back over her shoulder. She flops without grace, facing him now. "I don't talk in my sleep, Castle." 

She sounds confident. She hears herself, and it's absolutely confident. She'd believe her in a heartbeat if it weren't for the fact that even the gloom—even though he's pulling an absolutely straight face—she can see his eyes dancing. 

"You don't talk in your sleep," he repeats. A Boy Scout oath, but he never was a Boy Scout, was he? 

"I  _don't._ " She slaps at his shoulder, feeling stupid and childish and stupidly upset at the prospect. Vulnerable in her own damned bed. "I don't do anything in my sleep."

"Well, not in your sleep." His hand finds her hip and glides upward. His voice lowers dangerously. "But for someone who's mostly useless before coffee, can I just compliment you on your  _remarkable_  coordination when it comes to . . ."

"I don't," she says again. It sounds small. Timorous. She hates how still it makes him go. How serious, all of a sudden. She hates it, but she goes on anyway. From bad to worse, and she's not even sure what it's about. "No one's ever said . . ." 

"Maybe no one's ever listened." He ducks his head to kiss her softly. Swiftly. "Maybe no one has ever" — another kiss — "hung on your every word" — another and another — "day and night." 

"Day and night." She laughs. Snorts, really, and the sound buzzes against his lips and hers. "As if, Castle." 

"Day and night." He's solemn as he thumbs her cheekbone. Earnest as he curls his palm at her jaw. She'd rather look away, but he dots her nose with his own. He makes her laugh again and tricks her into meeting his eyes. "Try me, Kate."

"Try you?" She arches an eyebrow. Her hand takes a trip quick south, getting into the spirit of things, or so she thinks. 

"Really." He catches her hand, lightning quick. Relocates her fingers to his hip. His to hers. "Try me," he says against her lips. "Tell me a secret." The last word is a reverent, thrilling sibilant. "Tell me a lie." That's just as eager. More complicated, though. His teeth tug at her bottom lip, like he'd gladly take it back again. "Tell me . . ." He pulls back just far enough to look her in the eye. She gets the feeling he'd rather look away just now. He toughs it out, though. Braves it. "Tell me something I don't know."

It's a riddle. A  _riddle,_  and the answer drops right into her mind. She laughs—a bright, crystalline thing as unrecognizable as the squeak. He thrills to it. They both do. Their mouths meet, sloppy and hard. 

"The first thing." She's too breathless to feel silly.  "The first thing you ever said to me."

" _Where would you like it?_ " he replies promptly. Smugly. 

"Yeah." It's sly. Casual and noncommittal. "That." It's a cliffhanger, and he doesn't get it right off.

"That," he echoes, but his mind is working on it. The riddle and the answer. "Wait. That? Which." He frowns, and it's her eyes dancing now. "Beckett?'

"Yes."  

It's all she says. All she'll say before she dives back in and makes his head spin along with her own. He'll have to listen if he wants to know. 

_A secret._

_A lie._

_Something he doesn't know._

He'll have to listen, day and night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of stalled out after this. And, oh look! It's ANOTHER story about insomnia.


	4. Redaction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She almost died. Try as he might, he can't think what's novel about that. It’s a terrible thing in and of itself, the fact that he can’t think why it’s worse than the ten times before. The twenty times that it’s almost been both of them, except this was stupid. Except this was some lunatic with a brain tumor. Nothing at all either of them had done. Nothing at all they could have seen coming, and she's still shaking from that terrible stillness. Her long, ready muscles are weary. Vibrating with a back-and-forth cry in her body. In his. Adrenaline and more. She's still shaking. She almost died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another 800 words. Tag for Still (5 x 20).

 

 

* * *

 

"I'm taking it back." 

The words grip something in him. They tug down. He thought she was asleep. 

( _He didn't really think so. He hoped. He hoped._ )

"You're awake." He lets his voice sound thick. Sleep or unshed tears. White-knuckled terror. The effect should be the same on the quality of sound. It’s all still breath vibration, right? Constriction, and it’s not the time to fight against it. 

"You knew." She's scoffing. Chiding and fussing at him. It's weird.  “Just like I knew you were.” She hikes her knee higher and nestles further under his chin. It's definitely weird. “So, I’m taking it back." 

The words are exactly the same as the first time. Quiet, clear, and even. Decisive. The end of a conversation, not the beginning, and that means she wants something from him. Opposition or defiance, maybe. She’s’ counting on him to push. To take a nosy,  _noisy_  peek behind a definitely closed door. That's what she wants from him in this particular darkness. 

It’s what he gives, usually. It’s how this works between them. He's bad at denying her in the best of times, and this isn't. These aren't. 

She almost died. Try as he might, he can't think what's novel about that. It’s a terrible thing in and of itself, the fact that he can’t think why it’s worse than the ten times before. The twenty times that it’s almost been both of them, except this was stupid. Except this was some lunatic with a brain tumor. Nothing at all either of them had done. Nothing at all they could have seen coming, and she's still shaking from that terrible stillness. Her long, ready muscles are weary. Vibrating with a back-and-forth cry in her body. In his. Adrenaline and more. She's still shaking. She almost died. 

"Castle . . ." 

Her voice is serious now. Wounded, and the guilt is immediate. The sorrow of knowing it's he who's done this. It’s he who’s taken too long when she's still shaking and she wants him to ask. To not let it go.  

"You’re taking it back." He sounds calm as he shuffles their limbs. He rearranges their bodies beneath the sheets, calm and conversational, like he's mulling it over. Like he can’t think what she could possibly mean. "That nonsense about you not being into me  _way_  before I was into you?” It’s impressive. How light his voice is. The tinge of humor that’s not too much somehow. “No surprise there, Beckett. That was definitely not selling.”

"No." 

It’s a long time in coming, that  _No._  It’s emphatic and thick. Constricted, and there’s no mistaking why.  Not with a sudden, scalding shock of tears pooling in the hollow of his shoulder. 

"Kate.  _Kate!_ " He struggles, trying to get enough distance to see her face, but she's claw fingered and heavy. Shaking. 

"What I said," she chokes it out, again and again.

_What I said What I said What I said._

He holds her. Powerless to do more. Powerless all over again, he rocks her and breathes her name into the spaces in between.

_Kate. Shh._

She drags a hand across her face at last. She takes an unsteady breath that sounds half drowned and catches the front of his shirt in a fist.

"It was a terrible way . . . the first time?" She shakes her head.  "No. I take it back."

His mouth opens on nothing. On some kind of formless protest. But he feels it coiling in her again. Terror and adrenaline and fury. Tears, and he's bad at denying her. 

"You take it back," he says helplessly. “Ok. You take it back.” 

She calms immediately. Her limbs are slack, if not quite still, or maybe it’s his that aren’t. But she’s instantly, perfectly calm, as if this strange compact is all she needed to bring her rest. He won’t regret it. He can’t when the steady rise and fall of her ribs beneath his palm feels like all he wants in the world. He doesn’t regret it, and still it feels like no good deed unpunished. 

She takes it back, and it can’t help but sting. 

"It'll be better,” she says softly. She lifts a steady hand and combs her fingers through his hair. It’s an apology he hates himself for needing.   "It'll be the best first time."

"The best first time," he echoes. There's nothing else he can do, so he tries to mean it. He does mean it, or some future version of him might, anyway. 

"But you know, right?" Her voice is thick again, but this time it's sleep and nothing else. This time, he feels the sweep of her lashes against his skin as sleep comes for her.  A lone mercy. 

"I know," he tells the darkness. "I know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is cheating. Something I’ve had around that I hoped would be a bigger piece.


	5. Inscription

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He buys a notebook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early Season 1. 400 words

He buys a notebook. It’s kind of dumb. He has a notebook. A perfectly good one, or it used to be. The spiral’s bent from a lifetime riding the inside pocket of his jacket and bright blue cover has ragged cardboard teeth where it pulls away from the silver. But it was a perfectly good one back in the dark ages before smart phones. Back when he used it all the time. 

He’s tried using it now. Again. Because she’s not a fan of smart phones in her interrogation room. Or at her desk. Or her crime scene, even though it was  _one_  time, and it’s not like he was tweeting the body. 

He infers she’s not a fan from the eyebrow-singeing glare she gives him, and he’d really like to argue. Because how is pen and paper and the constant  _scratch scratch scratch_  less disruptive than some discreet, under-the-table tapping away in the digital age? 

But he doesn’t argue. He buys a notebook. Black moleskine. A ruled hardback, because that seems fitting. It seems necessary, along with the elastic band that snaps to when he sets it aside, because she’s a challenge. 

There’s nothing about her that lends itself to the two-dimensional expanse of the page. His quickly jotted notes aren’t exactly evergreen. He captures a gesture—the way she leads with her shoulder when she knows something no one else does, and the lift of her chin and the steeling of her fingers on the edge of the desk when he’s wrong. When he’s said something stupid. He captures her body language. Words she doles out all too grudgingly. 

_Don’t think you know me._

It’s warning. It’s admonishment and truth. His thumb fans the edges of the lined pages. His eye skips along the words as they riffle by. Gesture and inference and wild speculation.  

He doesn’t know her. She’s  _beyond_  complicated, and he’s set himself an impossible task. But he has a notebook. Hard covers and lined pages, and the snap of the elastic band is a metaphor. It’s the illusion of containment. Of steady progress. It’s only been a few days and already the balance of pages is tipping toward halfway. 

It’s an illusion at best, though. She slips free of the pages, moment to moment. She slips away,  whoever’s permission he has and doesn’t have. He’s hanging on by his fingernails

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this a while ago. I can't remember why I didn't post it with the other chapters.


	6. Harder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's draped over his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s on the M-rated, NSFW side, though pretty tame.

She's draped over his back. He's face down, breathing hard, and the scent of sweat darkening the hair at the nape of his neck blends with the sharp, clean notes of his shampoo. It's a heady mix that fills her nose. It makes her mouth open against his skin. It makes her bite down with purpose, and her tongue sweeps over the salt expanse along the top of his shoulder blade. 

"Beckett," he groans. 

She feels his skin tighten under her lips. Feels him shiver, and the sense of power is easily as intoxicating as the scent, taste, and sound all rolled together. 

“Castle.” She pitches her voice low, mimicking. Teasing, but it backfires. She’s pressing her lips to his spine one second, and the next she’s wide-eyed. Splayed out and staring up at him, wondering how the tables turned. 

“Thought you wore me out?” He grins down at her. A boyish quirk of lips that’s titillatingly at odds with the weight of his hips pinning hers to the bed. With the bite of fingers circling her wrists and drawing them high over head. “Were you counting on that?”  

“Counting?” She arches against him. Rolls her hips upward. “Past tense?”

“Oh, that?” He pushes back against her, not the least embarrassed by the evidence that she _has_ , in fact, worn him out. “That’s only part of the fun,” he murmurs as his mouth drags a wet trail from her jaw to her breast. He sucks and teases there, smiling as her nipple darkens and rises to meet him. “Just a small part.” His head pops up, suddenly, the wet smack of lips pulling away from skin like a cartoon sound effect. “Well, not _small_.” He cocks his head, mulling it over. “An appropriately sized part of the fun.” 

“Appropriately sized.” She laughs. A throaty, luxurious sound that comes all the way from her belly and makes him laugh, too, as he turns his attention back to her body. As his fingers trail from her wrists down the length of her arms. Over the taut, shivering landscape of her breasts. 

“Fun sized.” He nips at the skin on either side of her belly button, making the muscles twitch and jump. “Like Hallowe’en.” 

“Hallowe’en!” she yelps. She curls in on herself. Curls around him, laughing hard, and she can feel him smiling against her hip. She feels the huff and rumble of him chuckling into her skin as it all stretches out. The hilarity of it, and underneath, the crackle and pop of desire. The shiver and thrum and aching roll of it through her body. Through his. 

“My metaphor might have gotten away from me.” His head lolls against her thigh. He tips a lazy smile up at her, casual and deceptive as one hand traces a spiral pattern along the inside of her knee, traveling ever upward. 

“My point . . .” His fingertips dance briefly through the hot, slick mess between her legs. His teeth capture a minute patch of skin at the crease of her thigh, worrying at it as he pauses for dramatic effect. “My point is . . .” He shifts his body. Shifts hers to suit him, pressing at her knees to spread her thighs wide. He breathes the scent of her in. The scent of the two of them, and the groan he can’t stifle plucks at her nerves. Sets her vibrating with anticipation. “You wanna wear me out?” He drags his tongue over her. Presses the tip to her clit like he’s emphatically dotting an _i_ and peels her spine from the bed in the process. “Try harder.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wasn’t supposed to be anything. Then it was supposed to be something else. Now it’s this, I guess? Just 600 words. Early Season 5, I suppose.


	7. More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's dangerous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 300 words from the middle of the night.

It's dangerous. This post-tiger adrenaline that has him holding her coat like it's all in a day's work. Liberating the tangled fall of her hair and setting her clothes to rights as if they have a repertoire full of gestures like this.  Comfortable, intimate gestures. 

 

It's dangerous, because it's more than adrenaline. She slips her arms in the sleeves and stands patiently while he fusses. She smiles and speaks low so he has to stoop to hear her.  She smiles like she has him right where she wants him, and this is _more_. 

 

He thinks about her eleventh hour outburst. 

 

 _No, Castle! I did_ not _survive a bullet to the heart to die as tiger kibble._

 

Survive. It's the first time he's heard her use the word, and looking at her now—looking on as she tosses a glance over her shoulder and flicks her eyebrows skyward—he wonders if it's the first time she _has_ used it. 

 

_Next time._

 

He says it aloud again. Not a question this time, even though the elevator dings just then. Even though the doors glide closed and she's hidden from view, he presses a palm to his heart and feels her there in the steady knock of it against his ribs. It's more than adrenaline. More than the giddy tilt of the world when she flirts with him. 

 

His hand drops to his side. It curls into a fist as though he can hold it tight, this lingering bit of her. As though he needs to. 

 

_Next time._

 

The words echo, more dangerous than anything. He takes a leap of faith. He uncurls the fist, finger by finger, and loses nothing. She's there. The warmth of her glance. The light of her smile. She's more, and a piece of her is his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been sick and can’t sleep (even more than usual). Not coping well with the arrival of the fall TV season. Please excuse.


End file.
